Whitten Sabbatini, a photography major in the Department of Art, was recently accepted into the national exhibition, Picture This, What We Photograph, at the Mpls Photo Center in Minneapolis, Minn. The exhibition will run Jan. 18 through March 2, 2013, with an opening reception on Jan. 18.

Sabbatini’s work, titled Tim’s, is a color digital image of a current project where is he is photographing strangers. The photo was one of just 75 chosen out of more than 1200 submissions, and this is his first exhibition outside of the collegiate level.

“I am not surprised that Whitten’s work was accepted into this exhibition,” said Professor Marita Gootee. “His images are an honest reflection of the world around us. They are the everyday in a single moment. They are a reminder that we all are human.”

The juror for the exhibition was Cig Harvey, assistant professor of photography at the Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University. Harvey’s photographs have been exhibited in permanent collections of major museums, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography in Rochester, New York.

“Ultimately, I was looking for work that felt authentic and original,” said Harvey. “I gravitated toward images that embraced the formal concerns of photography – frame, light, color etc to its highest levels – to elevate the conceptual and narrative content of the picture. The resulting group of final images, which make up the Picture This exhibition, strongly demonstrate a command of the craft of photography and firmly point to the medium’s story telling capacities. I am honored and humbled to have been given this daunting task and wholly thank all the applicants and wish to congratulate those selected.”

“The authenticity and originality of Whitten’s work can be seen in the sincerity he puts into each image. Whitten’s imagery is a photographic survey of the region in which he resides. His work aims to honestly represent the people and places that are normally overlooked in our culture. By using photography, he is bringing an awareness to the viewer and a sense of importance to the people and places depicted in his photographs,” said Assistant Professor Dominic Lippillo.

“This might be Whitten’s first non-collegiate exhibition, but I expect it will not be his last,” said Gootee. “Whitten lives to capture these moments and to have others see what he sees. His camera is his voice. I know we will hear a lot more from him … this is only the start of his career.”